Stooshe - Love Me (Feat. Travie McCoy)

I'm really struggling to like Stooshe - and that's a rarity for me, because usually I adore girlbands. The thing is, Love Me/Fuck Me (whatever you want to call it, depending on your appetite for naughtiness), just doesn't feel strong enough for a proper 'let's break into the mainstream' single.

Yes, it might be doing the rounds on Radio 1 with a nice boost from ubiquito-man Travie MccCoy on board as your standard rent-a-rapper feature role, but beyond all that, Love Me feels at best, only perfunctory.

The hook's decent, in it's own right, but put alongside similar teen-bopper R&B/Pop types like Dionne Bromfield, Stooshe's brand just feels too insubstantial and airy to make any lasting mark. The girls' attitude's might be charming - filtered through some cheery comic ad-libs, but as those funky guitar lines trail out, you're left with no voracious need to immediately listen to the track again; to really, really buy into the group.

Love Me is released on the 5th March.

StooShe - Betty Woz Gone

Remember how revelatory and entertaining Lily Allen's comedy cockney charms were when she first released LDN and Smile back in 2006? Five years later, three-piece StooShe take to the saucy, heavily accented formula with aplomb to deliver the hilarious, irresistible Betty Woz Gone.

Plastered with F-words aplenty and feisty kiss-offs, Betty Woz Gone manages the rare feat of not only being intensely funny, but also being a rather good bit of R&B/pop. StooShe are in many ways an anti-girlband - three girls, yes - but so far removed from any of their contemporaries that they exist solely in their own sphere of influence, free to come up with bonkers delights like this.

The cartoony lyric-video is a must watch, simply for the fact it spells out every punch and upper-cut of the track's deft worldplay. As the band's press release says of them StooShe 'swear, they talk about sex, they wear weird clothes' - it sounds like a pretty promising formula to us.

With an album's worth of tracks already in the can - including In-Bred City (a real track name, no lie) - we can't wait to hear more from this colourful threesome.

Betty Woz Gone is available to download on iTunes now.